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**Stamper** · (This post was last modified: 2021-01-30, 10:43 AM by Stamper.)

So I just stumbled upon info on this regrade of The Terminator that seems to be 200% spots on.

This is an Alternative Regrade from a U Matic copy.

Here's information about this U Matic trend that is exclusively german as far as I know:

U-Matic came onto the market around 1972 and was used professionally by TV stations (e.g. also replaced the 16mm film, reporting, documentaries). In contrast to the later VHS / Betamax, U-Matic offered the better picture, but could not establish itself in the home video sector. U-Matic was still in daily use somewhere up until 2002.

When VHS / Betamax found its way onto the German market at the end of the 1970s, pirate copiers became active, every current cinema film (often a week before the cinema release), and tons of older film titles were copied using U-Matic machines. As a rule, the films were split into 2x60 min. U-Matic tapes.

This resulted in VHS mother tapes, that were a 1: 1 copy without any significant loss of quality. Copies of these original tapes were brought into households nationwide. Avarice Mentality already existed back then, so the first copies of the VHS mother tape were almost exclusively bought by pure film collectors (at 30-70 DM).

The bulk of other copies came from these copies on VHS / Betamax / Video 2000, i.e. with further decreasing picture quality, film titles flooded German households. Copies were sold / lent out and copied again at home for friends / relatives.

Anyone who still has the original 1: 1 copies knows that their quality, especially the original cinema format to be admired here (sometimes slightly zoomed in), was always better in terms of the picture than that of later original rental and purchase tapes from video stores .

It seems that in many cases, U Matic tapes are the only pristine preservations left of the original colors of films that are completely modified on home-video, like The Good The Bad & The Ugly, Alien or The Terminator.

There are dozens of Regrades for Terminator (1984) and the author of this U Matic regrade Der Rabe shows two other alternatives here as a comparison.

Blu ray - Remastered - Original Screenshot:

der rabe - Regrade from one of the last "U Matic cinema copies":

3Li - Hybrid Color Restoration:

DonaldFaQ - Regrade:

Blu ray - Remastered - Original Screenshot:

der rabe - Regrade from one of the last "U Matic cinema copies":

DonaldFaQ - Regrade:

Blu ray - Remastered - Original Screenshot:

der rabe - Regrade from one of the last "U Matic cinema copies":

Blu ray - Remastered - Original Screenshot:

der rabe - Regrade from one of the last "U Matic cinema copies":

Blu ray - Remastered - Original Screenshot:

der rabe - Regrade from one of the last "U Matic cinema copies":

Blu ray - Remastered - Original Screenshot:

der rabe - Regrade from one of the last "U Matic cinema copies":

Media - Info:

Serums · 2021-01-01, 09:12 AM

Wow! It looks quite nice. Thanks for posting.

**Stamper** · 2021-01-01, 11:00 AM

As noted in the media info, this release only comes with german 5.1 dub.

It's weird but the german audio seems delayed by 5ms, I wonder why.

I think it may be time to dust off all the original mono versions and sync them to this.

What do you think Sporv? Maybe it could be used as a base for your project.

Kynch · 2021-01-01, 12:59 PM

What resolution were these U Matic tapes in? The colour grading is very intriguing with its much higher red levels.

~~spoRv~~ · 2021-01-01, 01:27 PM

The colors are great - AFAIK the best color grading ever seen for Terminator!

Sure it could be useful for any project, even if as it is I think it should be quite good.

Now, waiting for T2 U-Matic! Wink

**pipefan413** · 2021-01-01, 02:25 PM

Given these were likely mastered on and for CRT, could the red/magenta just be @PDB's ol' CRT master phenomenon?

**Beber** · 2021-01-01, 03:20 PM

(2021-01-01, 02:25 PM)pipefan413 Wrote: Given these were likely mastered on and for CRT, could the red/magenta just be @PDB's ol' CRT master phenomenon?

Very likely.

~~spoRv~~ · 2021-01-01, 03:30 PM

(2021-01-01, 02:25 PM)pipefan413 Wrote: Given these were likely mastered on and for CRT, could the red/magenta just be @PDB's ol' CRT master phenomenon?

Raiders of the Lost Ark U-Matic is very prone to this problem, even watching at simple screenshots, while here it doesn't seem the case (read again: doesn't seem...)

**pipefan413** · (This post was last modified: 2021-01-01, 03:35 PM by pipefan413.)

(2021-01-01, 03:30 PM)spoRv Wrote: Raiders of the Lost Ark U-Matic is very prone to this problem, even watching at simple screenshots, while here it doesn't seem the case (read again: doesn't seem...)

Do you not agree there's a lot of warmth in the screenshots of the regrade? Also it's a regrade rather than the actual tape so I'd wager that the tape it was intended to look like may be even more pinkish than the regrade.

**zoidberg** · 2021-01-01, 03:55 PM

It depends on the source material, a lot of early home video used low-contrast positives (designed for telecine specifically) or simply release prints.
It would be interesting to know if this is a regrade of the blu or some sort of chroma-swap

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